Click image to order

Caravanning in Antarctica is no holiday

The British Antarctic Survey has a new research station with a difference, reports the New Scientist:

CONSTANT darkness, bone-chilling temperatures and cut off from the rest of the world. Living in Antarctica isn’t for the faint-hearted – and I should know, I overwintered there a while back. But at least I lived in a base built on rock; it’s quite another matter when your home sits on top of a floating ice shelf. This is Halley VI, the Antarctic’s most futuristic construction so far.

It needs to be to escape the fate of four of its predecessors, which were crushed beneath the accumulating snow. This is why it stands on long jackable legs. But the most unusual feature of this award-winning British Antarctic Survey base is that it can be towed to a new location thanks to huge skis – a good idea as the ice shelf it sits on moves seawards at a rate of 700 metres a year before eventually calving off into icebergs.

Halley VI is the first movable research station, built out of eight independent but linked modules containing dormitories, generators and labs.

Quote: ‘The Southern Ocean around Antarctica has similar warming and cooling cycles as the North Atlantic, just not as strong. The cycle is now going negative, and temperatures on land and in the ocean are going sharply cooler, with ice increasing. There is no warm ocean water melting ice shelves from below. The ocean is getting colder and is below freezing most of the time. Any increase in ice calving off the glaciers must be from increased snow feeding those glaciers or geothermal heating from volcanism under the ice.